Smoke Signals
August 1990
Page 12
Fife Used Radio Network to Educate the United States about Native Peoples
Kotzcbuc - Gary Fife wants to change the world. "I'm
trying to change the way the whole damn country thinks
about Native American people and Native American
issues," says the trim 39-year-old broadcast journalist,
brushing aside the glowing straight black hair that flows
halfway down his back.
Fife has a good shot at succeeding. Every weekday, he
delivers news and feature stories on Native Americans
to a huge public radio audience throughout America.
His broadcast always begins with these words: "I'm Gary
Fife."
These five minute daily doses of Native American news
- the first national Native anything, Fife says - come live
from the studios of the Alaska Public Radio Network in
Anchorage. National Native News is available free to
any public radio station.
And by building a national audience, Fife hopes to
dispel some persistent Native American stereotypes.
"Natives are not some exotic minority out West or in
the Arctic," he says. "That only perpetuates the stere
otype. We have to get away from the 'beads and feath
ers' media coverage of Native Americans. You know, a
colorful remnant of America's past. National Native
News stands alone for it's own brand of national news
coverage.
With the mainstream media still focusing almost
exclusively either on Native American' social problems,
such as alcoholism or on traditional Native ceremonies,
such as pow wows, National Native News stands alone
for its brand of coverage.
What's "beads and feathers" coverage? Take Ameri
cans' view of Thanksgiving each year, with the enduring
- and frankly, stereotypical - images of hardy pilgrims
sharing a bountiful harvest with their new-found Indian
friends. That bugs Fife.
Oh sure, this American likes Thanksgiving as much as
the next guy, but as serious journalist and a Native
American, Fife would rather cover real issues and real
people - not stereotypes - for his daily public radio
program.
"You wouldn't hear the typical corn-bean-squash
Thanksgiving story over National Native News," said
Fife. "Rather, let's talk to Native American Ranchers
and farmers and see what prices they're getting for corn
and how the drought has affected their crops.
Native Americans, according to Fife, are concerned
about the same things as most people: feeding your kids,
putting a roof over your head, working a job.
"I want to report on things that really do affect Native
Americans - education, health, labor, law and order, that
sort of thing," he said. "Nobody has ever looked at us
before in this light. We've had enough of looking at pow
wows. Yes, we do have pow wows, but that's not all of
us."
A typical National Native News broadcast might cover,
for example, state gaming laws affecting tribal sover
eignty in Minnesota, the incorporation of Native
language and culture in schools in Alaska, raging fires
on a reservation in North Dakota and an Indian woman
being honored in South Dakota.
National Native News emerged on a cold day in
January 1987 powered by a tiny $60,000 start-up grant
from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Fife's
voice, beamed by satellite from Anchorage, found just
22 stations using the service. In those days, Fife wasn't
sure of his paycheck from one month to the next.
Three-plus years later, with an ever growing audience
and solid financial backing, National Native News has
become a staple, an institution, a necessity for Ameri
cans who have come to depend on it.
At last count, 110 public stations in some 30 states air
National Native News daily, including many stations with
huge audiences in big cities such as New York, Washing
ton, Denver, Minneapolis, Houston, San Francisco and
Seattle.
"One hundred ten stations is not enough," said Fife,
who is reaching Natives and non-Natives alike across the
nation.
"I want to air on 300 stations," he said. That's an
ambitious goal, considering the country only has about
350 stations total.
During a recent interview with Kotzcbuc, light made its
way through a small window at the local KOTZ public
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Gary Fife
radio station, illuminating this fit-looking man's intense
dark eyes and hair, high cheekbones and handmade
beaded necklace.
Fife chuckled about being interviewed himself, since he
usually asks the questions, but he dutifully started at the
beginning.
"I was born and raised in Oklahoma," said Fife. "I
lived in a poor section of town in Tulsa just after the
war, just trying to get by."
Fife no longer speaks in his once thick Oklahoma -accent,
compelling friends back home to say he sounds
like a Yankee - not funny to someone descended from
the last Southern general, a full blooded Cherokee, to
surrender at the end of the Civil War.
A full blooded Native American himself, Fife's father is
Cree, his mother is Cherokee.
"I guess I'm not your run-of-the-mill Native," he said.
"I'm not from a reservation, and I did take advantage of
the public school system."
After high school, Rfe entered Northeastern State
College in Tahlcquah, Okla., during what he calls the
late 1960s, an outgrowth of America's civil rights
movement and other social upheavals of that era.
"I was more a student radical type, although Native
kids were very conservative," said Fife, who also played
blues harp in several bands. "I believe in change by
making your voice heard. On campus we pushed for
more student involvement and more cultural sensitivity
when you were just supposed to shut up and do your
time and get a piece of paper and get a job. We didn't
believe in that."
In 1971, Fife began an 11-year stint in Washington,
D.D., starting as a legislative intern with the Indian
Legal Information Development Service. He eventually
received his bachelor's degree from the Flaming
Rainbow Center of the University Without Walls,
affiliated with Missouri's Westminster College.
Fife became the first ever Native American Ford
Fellow in Education journalism in 1978, which meant
nationwide travel and research to examine contempo
rary issues in Native American education.
By the early 1980s, Fife was freelancing for various
Native publications in Washington, D.C., where he
gleaned a national understanding of Native American
issues.
"Sooner or later, every issue affecting Native Ameri
cans filter into Washington, from congressional action to
the BIA to Supreme Court decisions," he said.
Fife moved to Minneapolis in 1982, continuing in
journalism, covering Native American issues for broad-
cast and print media.
By 1986, Fife had distinguished himself as one of the
top Native American journalists in the country.
So when Diane Kaplan of the Alaska Public Radio
Network called Fife with an offer to start a national
news service for Native Americans, she knew Fife was J
the logical Native news person with the kind of national
experience APRN needed.
"Of course, when he said he'd take the job, his family
and friends all thought he was nuts for coming to
Alaska," Kaplan said.
Once in Anchorage, Fife started cashing in on his years
of networking with journalists across the country.
"He was on the phone for months," Kaplan said.
Fife needed to lure public radio journalists to call in .
stories from throughout the country - not an easy task
from Alaska, which seems a foreign destination to
people elsewhere in the country. Despite the odds, today
Fife boasts 75 working correspondents all over America.
"I have also found that Alaskans are proud that this
program is produced in Alaska and broadcast through
out the entire country," Kaplan said. "People ask, "Is it
really produced in Alaska?" With satellite technology,
you can produce anything anywhere." i
For Alaskans, it's not hard to understand why National
Native News is such a natural export for this state,
where Alaska Natives number more than 75,000 out of
535,000 overall population and hold tremendous
economic, political and cultural influence.
Not one to use a cliche in his own reporting, Fife can't
help himself when asked about his own success. "Its
really a dream, though, goes beyond just talking to
massive national radio audience about Native American
issues everyday. He also cares about what he reports.
"I'm not interested in how we got screwed in treaties a
hundred years ago," Fife said. "I am interested in
reporting on the here and now."
He wants Native news "to be good quality news -period,"
meeting the highest standards of professional
journalism. He won't take stories from correspondents
with a conflict of interest, such as a report on a tribe
from someone who works for that tribe.
"I am a journalist first," Fife said. "I am a Native man
(Continued on page 13)